re: #82 electrotek

I’ve pissed off a few Vietnamese-Americans when I condemned Ngo Dinh Diem which they see with rose-tinted glasses. Of course, this was over in Garden Grove, CA, otherwise known as “Little Saigon”.

How can anyone support such a repressive regime like that? Especially a Catholic one that literally attempted to wipe out Buddhism in the country?

Well, it’s actually easy to understand if one views it in the light of the usual methodology of French colonialism (which the overwhelming majority of Americans tended to ignore/dismiss/negate wrt Vietnam for decades). IOW, the Vietnamese who “mattered”, were all “Good Catholics” - I.e., tied to “The Civilized World”. - Buddhism was the “peasant religion” of the crude unwashed masses out in the paddies.